Cincinnati & Pittsburgh, A Startup City Swap?

Sports rivalries are intense between Pittsburgh, PA and Cincinnati OH (home to the Everywhere Else Cincinnati Conference). Of course there’s the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Cincinnati Bengals but also the Pirates and the Reds. Enough to make a grown person very passionate. Another thing people in both cities are passionate about is entrepreneurship and startups.

Pittsburgh has several startup initiatives including Built In Pittsburgh and Rustbuilt. Cincinnati has Cintrifuse, The Brandery, and CincyTech. This year Cincinnati also has the national Everywhere Else startup conference. Leaders in both startup communities thought the natural sports rivalries created a unique synergy of sorts that could help entrepreneurs in each city learn from each other.

So to further those ideas, Cincinnati’s Cintrifuse and Pittsburgh’s RustBuilt accelerator are holding a city swap on the last two Fridays of the month.

On Friday September 20th Rustbuilt will host a group of Cincinnati entrepreneurs from Cintrifuse at their facility in Pittsburgh, just in time for RustBuilt Night at PNC Park, home of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Entrepreneurs from both cities will enjoy each other’s company, share best practices, and then take in a night of baseball as the Pittsburgh Pirates host the Cincinnati Reds.

Then, the following week, Cincinnati’s Cintrifuse will host a group from RustBuilt for either startup speed dating or a startup crawl of sorts, still to be determined. Then the startups will enjoy an evening of baseball at the Great American Ballpark as the Reds host the Pirates.

But wait there’s more. Pittsburgh entrepreneur Kit Mueller tells us that several of the Pittsburgh startups will stay all weekend long and attend the Everywhere Else conference beginning that Sunday night.

Kyle is the Founder and Content Director of Nibletz.com and the creator of everywhereelse.co. He has over 23 years in traditional and new media experience encompassing everything from a long career in top 40 radio to launching one of the most well known social brand in mobile tech. Kyle lives breathes and loves writing about startups and tech. Find me on Twitter http://twitter.com/startuptechguy & Rebel Mouse http://startuptechguy